CLARK – Congressman Leonard Lance met with employees at L’Oréal USA in Clark and touted a bill he authored to promote innovation and industry growth by updating current federal regulations for the cosmetics and personal care industry.

Lance (R-NJ-7), who serves on the House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee, said his bill would modernize the Federal Food, Drug & Cosmetic Act with reasonable, science-based reforms to help personal care product companies, like L’Oréal USA, that are seeking to innovate, create new products and grow their businesses.

“Given the current state of the American economy, what we need right now are updated federal regulations based on sound science to help, not hurt job creation,” said Lance. “H.R. 4395 seeks to advance consumer safety and provides a regulatory framework that furthers growth and innovation for American cosmetics manufacturers and small businesses.”

As part of the event, Lance and Eric Bone, Senior Vice President for Research & Innovation at L’Oréal USA, addressed employees regarding the legislation and briefly toured the facilities.

“For more than one hundred years, consumer safety has been of paramount importance to L’Oréal. Congressman Lance’s legislation will provide the FDA with a more modern framework for oversight of the growing global cosmetics market, new safety assurances for consumers and greater regulatory certainty for manufacturers to innovate and develop new personal care products that meet consumers’ needs,” said Bone.

Additionally, John Hurson, Executive Vice President of Government Affairs at the Personal Care Products Council, said the regulatory updates proposed by Lance would help job creation in the personal care product industry.

In 2011, Representatives Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), Ed Markey (D-MA), and Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) introduced “The Safe Cosmetics Act” (H.R. 2359), which was backed by the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics and several other consumer and public health advocacy groups. The bill would require full disclosure of ingredients and give the FDA the authority to recall dangerous products from the market.